In which I haven’t posted in over a month so I’m just gonna spew some utterly boring crap into a CMS interface and publish it.

Oh, not much.

You?

Well the usual. Some gigs and stuff. Work, a lot of time fucking off in IRC with kids, some time visiting with friends – mostly the Wendover-Briggs Machine on their comfy patio. A couple loads of laundry, some cooking, some cleaning. I bought some ebooks, took some naps, got my hair did.

The band’s been working up the material from the new album. The guitar festival is next month! Come see it!

I got new glasses and new contacts: expensive but so needed, and I also had my teeth cleaned. I’d much rather spend that money on the vacation I so desperately need, but of course I don’t have insurance and I need the services so the money has to be spent.

(In related news I’m really pretty pissed off that I am going to be required to carry a health insurance policy I can’t afford in the very near future. I mean, if I could afford it I WOULD ALREADY FUCKING HAVE IT. (One of the many reasons I choose not to own a car is the expense of insurance. In all my years of paying car insurance, I never once got anything back out of it. Even if you pay for years and your claim is valid, they find a way to deny you.) Like the lottery, insurance appears to be nothing more than an idiot tax, but unlike the lottery it’s fucking mandatory. Insurance is merely a way to make the greedy richer, just to make a hideously weak blanket statement.)

I got my hours cut 25% and have been taken off salary and demoted to hourly. My employer says this change is intended to make me happier in my job, but I’m not sure how a pay cut is supposed to increase my contentment. In compensation for the cut, I’m supposed to be free of first-tier calls, but for now they’re still happening. Hopefully when the kinks are ironed out I won’t have to set up dial-up with some old guy on Windows 95 ever, ever again.

I’m now working 10 – 5, so the waking up at 5:30 bullshit is curtailed for the nonce, but I don’t really feel like I have more time off. Maybe I’ll decide to work 8 – 3 and get a PT evening job, except that would never work with my gig schedule so fuck it. While I do get pissy sometimes about having to do gigs, at the base I’m grateful I gig frequently enough to even be grumpy about it.

I have seen no Oscar nominated films. I consume very little news. I watch BBC shows on streaming video sometimes. I have about 30 books on my Kindle I haven’t finished reading. I took a three-hour nap last Sunday afternoon after sleeping in late and before going to bed early.

Apropos of nothing, I spend a lot of time wondering about the people who find it necessary to admit they’re posting/IRCing/tweeting/etc while pooping. Is this a sign of poor potty training, or a wonderful lack of shame? I just cant TELL.

In which I have a metric fuckton of time, but still feel like I’m too busy to blog.

I survived the Morgan family reunion last weekend, which was, in essence, five days of drinking like a fish bookended with two six-hour trips on Greyhound buses with my brother.

Apropos of nothing: THIS IS AN AMAZING GODDAMNED BOOK. You can get it for free here.

I’m doing part-time QA work again, which is good because it looks like I only have two weeks of unemployment benefits left. I went to a mandatory three-hour meeting at WorkSource this afternoon. They showed us how to fill out forms and made us watch PowerPoints on Washington state’s unemployment rate. Totally uplifting. Not.

I’m probably going to have to get a food handler’s card because I’ve started applying at grocery stores and coffee shops. That year I spent taking CCNA prep classes has resulted in a grand total of zero cool jobs to apply for, so maybe I’ll just go the two-part-time-jobs route. (Luckily my gig schedules are usually solid pretty far in advance, so I’ll just be that old crafty bitch who asks for weekends off three months before the kids remember to.)

I’ll be performing at Ritzville this weekend. Yay! So excited!

I know it’s finally summer and therefore really quite hot out, but I’m making chili for dinner anyway.

In which I wish I posted more.

Every time I post, I think, “That was pretty good! I need to post more often!” But then nothing happens so I have nothing to write about so I don’t write and then I check my site and it’s been, like, half a month since I wrote anything. (I’m proud to say that it took me nearly an entire decade to really start to run out of shit to say!)

Part of it, I think, is that most of the things I find really interesting socially are not appropriate topics. I can’t talk about how that couple’s falling apart spectacularly, or about that person’s funky health issues, or about that couple’s freaky sex life. I mean, I could, but then I wouldn’t have any friends. And I like having friends. I like getting stopped on the street by people who know my name. It’s nice not being a stranger anymore.

I don’t have a job, so I can’t bitch about stupid policies (and when I do have a job, I still can’t, because that shit gets you dooced. Which SUCKS, because all jobs, no matter how cool, are stupid and need to be mocked).

(more…)

In which…eh. Blah blah blah.

I’ve lost two pounds. I’m doing really well on the diet. In other news, self-discipline is not, as much as I wish I could report otherwise, really its own reward. I want to eat an entire wedge of brie RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.

I received my new fuzzy-lined Crocs yesterday. (Thanks, mom!) They have a tiny red spaceship on them, for which I paid an extra two bucks and which was totally worth it. They are fugly and comfy and I adore them.

(more…)

In which there’s not much going on, really. Yay Christmas break!

Went to a great pre-solstice party Sunday night, hung out with fun people and ate great food.

Volunteered at Helpline on Monday afternoon; it was great. Got to give away blankets and gloves and food and fix a computer and everything.

Did my Xmas shopping (since I’m unemployed, everybody gets the same thing) finally. Had leftover chili at Amity’s house Monday night. (more…)

In which there’s, um. Psssh. Yeah. Whatever. Gah.

1.) Kid behind the counter: I know you look at me and see an ol’ lady, but seriously. I’m capable of irony. Hell, I’ve done your stupid shitty job and tons more just like it. Don’t roll your eyes at me, punk, when I smile at you after some conehead customer does something stupid, because I could totally beat up your mom.

2.) My hair is now about 20% gray. WTF, over?

3.) In my WordPress installation, on the Add New Post page, is a Categories window. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for years. The only way I can edit or add categories is to go to a whole ‘nother part of the interface, which I don’t, which is why my categories suck. I’ve never been able to figure out how to fix it.

4.) There’s this website called freelancer.com. I spent an hour this morning looking at the jobs posted. My observations:

• You can get a part-time virtual assistant with pretty much my entire skillset for $200 per month. That person will live in India, and that $200 will probably go much farther there than it does here.
• There are persons or companies out there who need teams of ten or more to type CAPTCHA entries. I can’t for the life of me figure out why, unless they’re using cheap human labor to open doors for irritating fucking ‘bots. The pay is $.70 per thousand CAPTCHAs entered.
• There’s a huge market for “writers,” where “writers” equals “people who bang out enthusiastic three hundred-word articles about meaningless crap and get paid $1.50 to $3.00 per piece.”

Apparently if I wanna work in this world, I need to get new skills or move to India.

5.) I painted my nails red yesterday.

6. I have no idea if starting my EB while they were still debating EUC has fucked up my school plans or not. I have still not been awarded any financial aid, but they don’t even mail the stuff until August 20th.

7.) I sleep much too much.

8.) I cleaned my room and did my laundry, but I need to vacuum.

In which I wanna post but don’t really have anything to say and am doing it anyway!

The latest WordPress upgrade looks nice! I’ll have to upgrade my dad’s installation this weekend.

I’m using a new template. I like it. Do you like it?

Amazon is pissing me off. It’s been three days and they haven’t answered my question about why their custom software DOESN’T FUCKING WORK.

This was my breakfast:

The onion festival is this weekend; I’ll be going to see Vaughn Jensen play Land Title tonight with Becca ’cause it’s her birthday.

I have fewer than three dollars to my name.

I called about my extended benefits; they had me leave a message and said I’d get a call back in two days.

I need to wash my hair more than all of you put together.

I’m spending tons of online time here and here.

Update: I finally decided to RTFM and the Amazon software works fine, I just need to feed it UPCs I don’t have. Bleggh.

In which we use an AI to analyze my writing.

I went to genderanalyzer.com and typed in my URL and clicked the Analyze button and waited patiently. It said, “We think http://goblinbox.com is written by a woman (67%).”

Only sixty-seven percent?

Hmm.